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Shameful: "Painted Lady" Sells Herself on the Street

Scott Lucas | Photo: Courtesy SFARMLS | June 13, 2014

And what is worse, the Chronicle celebrates poor woman's servitude.

A San Francisco woman sold herself on the corner of Alamo Square Park earlier this month. This news alone should shock the delicate system of every right-thinking San Franciscan, but to compound the offense, this servitude was celebrated in the local press.

"One of San Francisco’s famous “Painted Ladies” on the corner of Alamo Square Park finally sold earlier this month after languishing on the market since mid-March. [Her] original asking price of $4 million was slashed a month later to $3.5 million. [She] sold for $3.1 million this month."

(We ask that members of the fairer sex cease reading at this juncture, lest they be exposed to the harsh verities of life that may upset the balance of their delicate constitutions.)

Why, the very notion that our paper of record would see fit to deny the feminine pronoun to this benighted woman was enough to cause us to choke on our morning tea. (Thank heavens our butler was able to revive us. He's a good man, and thorough.) Would you allow a daughter of your own loins, dear reader, to be referred to in print as a "Painted Lady?" We should expect not. We should think that her parents should wish to invoke code duello against the editors of the rag.

Pilling indignity upon indignity, we further learned that the woman—prior to her sale—had been a tourist attraction, renting herself out for as little as $600 so that cretins and sub-morons from demesnes east could "have a taste of the Victorian high life." We also came upon details of heart-wrenching life worthy of Dickens: That the besmirched woman, born in 1892, had been purchased by its current "owners" in the year of our Lord 1976 for a mere $65,000.

We demand that protection of the honor of own young women: Legal controls on who may court them and how. Controls on the growth of dowries such that native San Franciscans can remain in good standing. We hear rumors of a coming wave of No-Fault divorces that will throw our menfolk into the streets unencumbered. As we see today, the unrestricted practice of Free Love leads to nothing but the depredations of the free market. And then soon the flowers of our virginity will be selling themselves to every passing Googler or Twitterati. Huns and Soviets the lot of them.

Know that we expect more probity and virtue from the guardians of our public correspondence. We have reported this heinous crime to the Committees of Vigilance and Temperance, as well as the authorities at City Hall.